Stravinsky's career as a composer may be divided roughly into three stylistic periods:

[edit]Russian

period (from about 1908 to 1919)

Stravinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov (seated together on the left) in 1908

Stravinsky's first period (which excludes some of his early minor works) began with Feu d'artifice (Fireworks) and included the three ballets he composed for Diaghilev. These three works have
several characteristics in common: they are scored for an extremely large orchestra; they useRussian folk themes and motifs; and they were influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov's imaginative scoring
and instrumentation. They also exhibit considerable stylistic development, from The Firebird, which emphasizes certain tendencies in Rimsky-Korsakov and features pandiatonicism in a
conspicuous way in the third movement, to the use of polytonality in Petrushka and the intentionally brutal polyrhythms and dissonances of The Rite of Spring.
The first of his ballets, The Firebird, is noted for its imaginative orchestration. This is evident from the outset, as heard in the introduction, which exploits the double bass's low register. Petrushka,
the first of Stravinsky's ballets to draw on folk mythology, is also distinctively scored. In The Rite of Spring, the composer attempts to depict the brutality of pagan Russia in his music, the
inspiration of the violent motifs that recur throughout the work.
If Stravinsky's stated intention was "to send them all to hell", [61] then he may have rated the 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring as a success: it is a famous classical music riot and Stravinsky
referred to it on several occasions in his autobiography as a "scandale".[62] There were reports of fistfights among the audience and the need for a police presence during the second act. The real
extent of the tumult is open to debate and the reports may be apocryphal. [63]
Other pieces from the Russian period include: Le Rossignol (The Nightingale); Renard (1916); Histoire du soldat (1918); and Les noces (The Wedding) (1923).
[edit]Neoclassical

period (from about 1920 to 1954)

The next phase of Stravinsky's compositional style extends from the opera Mavra (192122), which is regarded as the start of his neo-classical period, until 1952, when he turned toserialism.
[3]
Pulcinella (1920) and the Octet for wind instruments (1923) are the first of his compositions to feature his re-examination of the classical music of Mozart, J. S. Bach and their contemporaries.
[citation needed]
Works such as Oedipus Rex (1927), Apollon musagte (1928) and the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (193738) continued his re-thinking of eighteenth-century musical styles.
Other works from this period include the three symphonies: the Symphonie des Psaumes (Symphony of Psalms, 1930), Symphony in C (1940) and the Symphony in Three
Movements (1945). Apollon, Persephone (1933) and Orpheus (1947) exemplify not only Stravinsky's return to the music of the Classical period, but also his exploration of themes from the ancient
Classical world such as Greek mythology.
In 1951 he completed his last neo-classical work, the opera The Rake's Progress, to a libretto by W. H. Auden that was based on the etchings of William Hogarth. It premiered in Venice that year
and was produced around Europe the following year, before being staged in the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1953.[64] It was staged by the Santa Fe Opera in a 1962 Stravinsky Festival, in
honour of the composer's 80th birthday.[65] The music is direct but quirky and borrows from classic tonal harmony, but also interjects surprising dissonances. It features Stravinsky's trademark offrhythms and harks back to the operas and themes of Monteverdi, Gluck and Mozart. It was revived by the Metropolitan Opera in 1997.
[edit]Serial

period (from 1954 to 1968)

In the 1950s, Stravinsky began using serial compositional techniques such as dodecaphony, the twelve-tone technique originally devised by Arnold Schoenberg.[66]
He first experimented with non-twelve-tone serial techniques in small-scale vocal and chamber works such as the Cantata (1952), the Septet (1953) and Three Songs from Shakespeare (1953).
The first of his compositions to be fully based on such techniques was In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954). Agon (195457) was the first of his works to include a twelve-tone series and Canticum
Sacrum (1955) was the first piece to contain a movement entirely based on a tone row.[67] Stravinsky later expanded his use of dodecaphony in works such as Threni (1958), A Sermon, a
Narrative, and a Prayer (1961) and The Flood (1962), which are based on biblical texts.
Agon is choreographed for twelve ballet dancers. It forms an important transition between Stravinsky's neo-classical period and his serial style. Parts of Agon are reminiscent of the 'white-note'
tonality of his neo-classic period, while others (for example Bransle Gay) display his re-interpretation of serial methods.
[edit]Innovation

and influence

Stravinsky is known as "one of music's truly epochal innovators". [68] The most important aspect of Stravinsky's work, aside from his technical innovations (including in rhythm and harmony), is the
'changing face' of his compositional style while always 'retaining a distinctive, essential identity'. [68] He himself was inspired by different cultures, languages and literatures. As a consequence, his
influence on composers both during his lifetime and after his death was, and remains, considerable.
Stravinsky's use of motivic development (the use of musical figures that are repeated in different guises throughout a composition or section of a composition) included additive motivic
development. This is where notes are subtracted or added to a motif without regard to the consequent changes in metre. A similar technique can be found as early as the sixteenth century, for
example in the music of Cipriano de Rore, Orlandus Lassus, Carlo Gesualdo and Giovanni de Macque, music with which Stravinsky exhibited considerable familiarity.[69]
The Rite of Spring is notable for its relentless use of ostinati, for example in the eighth note ostinato on strings accented by eight horns in the section Augurs of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls).
The work also contains passages where several ostinati clash against one another.
Stravinsky was noted for his distinctive use of rhythm, especially in The Rite of Spring.[70] According to the composer Philip Glass, "the idea of pushing the rhythms across the bar lines [...] led the
way [...]. The rhythmic structure of music became much more fluid and in a certain way spontaneous". [71] Glass mentions Stravinsky's "primitive, offbeat rhythmic drive". [72] According to Andrew J.
Browne, "Stravinsky is perhaps the only composer who has raised rhythm in itself to the dignity of art". [73] Stravinsky's rhythm and vitality greatly influenced the composer Aaron Copland.[74]
Stravinsky's first neo-classical works were the ballet Pulcinella of 1920 and the stripped-down and delicately scored Octet for Wind Instruments (1923). He may have been preceded in his use of
neoclassical devices by composers such as Prokofiev and Erik Satie. By the late 1920s and 1930s, the use by composers of neoclassicism had become widespread. [citation needed]
Stravinsky composed pieces that elaborated on individual works by earlier composers, a tradition that goes back at least to the fifteenth century quodlibet and parody mass. An early example is
his Pulcinella of 1920, where he used music then attributed to Giovanni Pergolesi. His source material was at times quoted directly and at other times reinvented. He developed this technique
further in the ballet The Fairy's Kiss (1928), which was based on music by Tchaikovsky. Later examples of comparable musical transformations include Stravinsky's use of Schubert's Marche
Militaire No. 1 in his Circus Polka (1942) and "Happy Birthday to You" in Greeting Prelude (1955).
In The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky stripped folk themes to their most basic melodic outlines, often contorting them beyond recognition using added notes, inversion anddiminution.[citation needed]
[edit]Use

of the orchestra

As with many late romantic composers, Stravinsky often called for huge orchestral forces, especially in his early ballets. The Firebird proved him to be the equal of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and lit
the "fuse under the instrumental make-up of the 19th century orchestra". In The Firebird he took the orchestra apart and analysed it. [75] Aaron Coplandcharacterized The Rite of Spring as the
foremost orchestral achievement of the 20th century.[76]
Stravinsky wrote for unique combinations of instruments in smaller ensembles, chosen for their precise tone colours. For example, Histoire du soldat is scored
for clarinet, bassoon,cornet, trombone, violin, double bass and percussion, a strikingly unusual combination for 1918.
Stravinsky occasionally exploits the extreme ranges of instruments, most famously at the opening of The Rite of Spring, where he uses the extreme upper reaches of the bassoon to simulate the
symbolic 'awakening' of a spring morning.
[edit]Reception
Stravinsky is acknowledged as one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. [77][78][79] He was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the
century.[72] He became a naturalized French citizen in 1934 and a naturalized United States citizen in 1945. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he achieved fame as a
pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.
In 1923, Erik Satie wrote an article about Igor Stravinsky in Vanity Fair.[80] Satie had met Stravinsky for the first time in 1910. His attitude towards the Russian composer is marked by deference, as
can also be seen from the letters he wrote to him in 1922, in preparation for the Vanity Fair article. With a touch of irony, he concluded in one of these letters, "I admire you: are you not the Great
Stravinsky? I am but little Erik Satie".[citation needed] In the published article, Satie argued that measuring the 'greatness' of an artist by comparing him to other artists, as if speaking about some 'truth',
is illusory and that every piece of music should be judged on its own merits and not by comparing it to the standards of other composers. That was exactly what Jean Cocteau did when he
commented deprecatingly on Stravinsky in his 1918 book Le Coq et l'Arlequin.[81]
According to The Musical Times in 1923:

All the signs indicate a strong reaction against the nightmare of noise and eccentricity that was one of the legacies of the war.... What has become of the works that made up the program of the
Stravinsky concert which created such a stir a few years ago? Practically the whole lot are already on the shelf, and they will remain there until a few jaded neurotics once more feel a desire to eat
ashes and fill their belly with the east wind. [82]
In 1935, the American composer Marc Blitzstein compared Stravinsky to Jacopo Peri and C.P.E. Bach, conceding that, "there is no denying the greatness of Stravinsky. It is just that he is not great
enough".[83] Blitzstein's Marxist position was that Stravinsky's wish to "divorce music from other streams of life", which is "symptomatic of an escape from reality", resulted in a "loss of stamina",
naming specifically Apollo, the Capriccio, and Le Baiser de la fe.[84]
The composer Constant Lambert described pieces such as Histoire du soldat as containing "essentially cold-blooded abstraction". [85] Lambert continued, "melodic fragments inHistoire du
Soldat are completely meaningless themselves. They are merely successions of notes that can conveniently be divided into groups of three, five, and seven and set against other mathematical
groups" and he described the cadenza for solo drums as "musical purity...achieved by a species of musical castration". He compared Stravinsky's choice of "the drabbest and least significant
phrases" to Gertrude Stein's: "Everyday they were gay there, they were regularly gay there everyday" ("Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene", 1922), "whose effect would be equally appreciated by
someone with no knowledge of English whatsoever". [86]
In his 1949 book Philosophy of Modern Music, Theodor W. Adorno described Stravinsky as an acrobat and spoke of hebephrenic and psychotic traits in several of Stravinsky's works. Contrary to a
common misconception, Adorno didn't think that the hebephrenic and psychotic imitations that the music was supposed to contain were its main fault, as he pointed out in a postscriptum that he
added later to his book. Adorno's criticism of Stravinsky is more concerned with the 'transition to positivity' that he found in the his neoclassical works. [87] Part of the composer's error, in Adorno's
view, was his neo-classicism, [88] but of greater importantance was his music's "pseudomorphism of painting", playing off le temps espace (time-space) rather than le temps dure (time-duration)
of Henri Bergson.[89] According to Adorno, "one trick characterizes all of Stravinsky's formal endeavors: the effort of his music to portray time as in a circus tableau and to present time complexes
as though they were spatial. This trick, however, soon exhausts itself". [90] Adorno maintained that the "rhythmic procedures closely resemble the schema of catatonic conditions. In certain
schizophrenics, the process by which the motor apparatus becomes independent leads to infinite repetition of gestures or words, following the decay of the ego". [91]
Stravinsky's reputation in Russia and the USSR rose and fell. Performances of his music were banned from around 1933 until 1962, the year Nikita Khrushchev invited him to the USSR for an
official state visit. In 1972, an official proclamation by the Soviet Minister of Culture, Ekaterina Furtseva, ordered Soviet musicians to "study and admire" Stravinsky's music and she made hostility
toward it a potential offence.[92]
While Stravinsky's music has been criticized for its range of styles [according to whom?], scholars had "gradually begun to perceive unifying elements in Stravinsky's music" by the 1980s. [citation needed] Earlier
writers, such as Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Boris de Schloezer and Virgil Thomson, writing in Modern Music (a quarterly review published between 1925 and 1946), could find only a common "
'seriousness' of 'tone' or of 'purpose', 'the exact correlation between the goal and the means', or a dry 'ant-like neatness' ". [93]
From the mid-1960s onwards Stravinsky's music influenced the work of musicians such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass[citation needed].
He was honoured in 1982 by the United States Postal Service with a 2 Great Americans series postage stamp.